A Different Perspective
by EmbersBlaze
Summary: How Brass found out about Grissom & Sara
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own CSI or any of the characters contained in this story, which is not for profit of any kind.

Author's Note: This a story about how Brass found out that Grissom and Sara were together.

**A Different Perspective**

Detective Jim Brass thought he'd seen everything after so many years on the fob. Especially in Vegas. But he was wrong.

He didn't mean to see what he saw. In his defense, it had been dark and he didn't really know _what_ he was seeing at first.

It all started when he'd wanted to see how Lady Heather's evidence was progressing. Or at least that was the official story. Really he just wanted to see how Grissom was coping.

Personally, Brass had never understood the man's fascination with the woman. Well yeah, she was pretty, but that had never really seemed to rattle Grissom's chain before. And geez, had he seen what she did for a living?

So, he'd been walking into CSI HQ when he'd seen it. A couple of shadows moving between two cars.

Now being a cop, he had to check this out, especially with it being outside CSI. And he had the perfect angle. Because they were ensconced in shadows, no one from inside would see them. But for Brass they were backlit by the large, growing windows of the building. He sighed in relief when he saw that it was just Grissom and Sara.

Brass had parked around the side of the building, so they hadn't seen or heard him. And something was just . . . _off _ with the scene. But he couldn't put his finger on just what it was.

Until Grissom reached out to take Sara's hand. And then stepped forward, closer to her.

Brass might have written off the hand-holding as friendly. She could've been upset. And Lord knows friendly hand-holding was more likely than anything else. But it was the stepping forward that did it. Because that was definitely her personal space. No . . . that was _intimate_ space.

It was at this point that he realized his mouth was hanging open.

Still staring at the scene unfolding in front of him, he watched Grissom speaking to Sara with only a few inches between them. He wouldn't have been able to hear a single word of their conversation if they'd been yelling at him with all that damn Vegas background noise, but he would've bet his badge that Grissom was talking to her softly. It was in his posture, the angle of his head, slightly tilted forward.

But then Sara pulled away slightly. They both turned and went in the building.

And Brass was left gaping in the parking lot.

_Well damn Grissom!_ He thought. _'Bout time, too._

But Brass also knew what that had all been about. And he was worried that his clueless friend might be about to wreck a good thing if he didn't back off with Lady Heather.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

A/N: This one's a bit shorter than the last chapter, but oh well. Thanks to the people who reviewed!

**Chapter 2**

He knew it was wrong. He knew that he couldn't tell anyone what he saw in the parking lot. Grissom and Sara obviously didn't want to go public with whatever they were doing. But he had almost let it out. In his own defense, Catherine had started the gossip, though. Wanting to know about Grissom and Lady Heather. Such old news. What Brass had was up to date and so much better.

Usually the gossip stuff just didn't really draw him in. Of course he kept up with it to a degree. It was always helpful to know what was going on in the departments. But this was Grissom and Sara for Christ's sake!

And if their friend was screwing up, who better to set his ass straight than Catherine?

So he had almost told her. But then that guard had shown up dead and effectively derailed the conversation.

Probably a good thing, too.

And now they were on their way over to Lady Heather's house to talk about the death of that security guard. The one who mysteriously died in the same place where someone tried to kill Heather. Yeah. Probably just a coincidence. Well, if Grissom and Sara were together maybe she'd at least be able to keep him away from everyone's favorite neighborhood dominatrix.

Or not.

What the hell had just happened? Since when did Grissom spend the night at Lady Heather's place chatting over a good cup of tea? Especially since he had a girlfriend?!

Didn't he? They had to be dating; he'd seen it with his own eyes. If Grissom was acting so cozy with Heather while he was dating Sara, he'd deck him one. _Somebody_ had to knock some sense into the idiot!

Brass decided to do a little experiment. If Grissom and Sara were as comfortable with each other as they seemed last night, they must have been dating for a while now. So there would obviously be clues of this in their places of residence. Because whenever you come into contact with something, you leave a little piece of yourself behind. Jim Brass had not been night shift supervisor of the crime lab at one time for nothing.

This would be interesting.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I do not own CSI nor do I own the characters contained within this story, which is not for profit.

Author's Note: Thank you to all the people who have taken the time to review! It makes my day!

**Chapter 3**

Phase one of Brass's experiment was in progress. He was pulling up to Grissom's townhouse, ostensibly to talk to him about his major faux pas at Lady Heather's house when they had shown up to talk about the dead security guard. Because no doubt _somebody _higher up was going to have nice little chat with Gil about that. So, Brass was here to harp on him for that mistake.

And if he managed a little subtle snooping, both in the way of looking around and digging for information while he was here, well then all the better.

However, as he was walking up to the house, he realized there was a serious obstacle in the way of "Phase One." And that obstacle was the fact that Grissom actually had to be home for it to work. First, he noticed that all the lights were off. Then, he noticed that Grissom's car was not actually in the garage. A full minute of banging on the door confirmed what Brass had feared: the man just was not home.

Okay, no problem. Phase one and phase two were pretty much interchangeable. He could just talk to Sara first. Now, being the detective that he was, it had not taken long to finagle the address out of Greg. He knew that Greg and Sara had hung out more over the last few months, since Greg's hospitalization and the following trial. Surprisingly, Greg had said that he'd never really gone up to Sara's apartment all that much, though. They'd mostly hung out at his place or gone out to eat, which he said wasn't surprising since right after getting out of the hospital it had hurt to move too much, and later on he'd been going stir crazy to get out of the house. But it spoke volumes more to Brass, now that he knew what he knew. Luckily, Greg didn't seem to think it was suspicious that Brass wanted Sara's address, so he needn't have worried that the young man wouldn't buy his "I wanted to swing by and drop off a book on physics that my sister gave to me for some odd reason, and I thought she'd make better use of it than me" line.

It didn't take him very long to get to Sara's apartment complex. He knew Sara would not be so easy to sway, so he figured he'd go with a half-truth. He would just say he wanted to check on how she was doing after the Lady Heather case. That was all he needed to say. Years of interrogations had taught him when not to talk. Besides, everyone knew that Sara had always had a thing for Grissom, and most suspected he'd always had a thing for her. It wouldn't be odd for Brass to want to check on her after having to process the Lady Heather herself.

Only when he walked up to the door and heard no noise after ringing the bell, he was disappointed to realize that he'd been thwarted yet again. Nope, Sara Sidle was not home, either. Which also left him with the burning question: Where the hell were they?

Half of his question was answered a few seconds later when Sara came strolling down the hallway, fumbling for her keys in a pocket.

And trailing behind her was . . . a dog.

_Since when does Sara have a dog?_ he wondered.

"Sara, hey. Since when do you have a dog?"

Slightly startled, she inhaled a light breath of air. "Brass. Hi. What are you doing here?"

Her words sounded a bit stunted. More than they should have given the situation. "Well, I just dropped by to see how you were doing."

She eyed him suspiciously. "I'm fine. Was there something in particular you wanted to know about?" And her look told him she knew exactly what he probably wanted to talk about. Obviously she knew he wanted to see how the case, or more specifically, the focus of the case had affected her. And she did not appear to want to talk about it.

"Well, as the only person working the case who had not yet met the infamous, whip-wielding dominatrix, I just wanted to see what your impression of her was."

Apparently this was an appropriate response, because she finished walking to the door and began to unlock it. "Come in."

Detective Brass might have been good friends with Dr. Gil Grissom, the man notorious for disregarding anything that was not scientifically tested and proven. But after years on the job, Brass had learned to trust a good gut instinct. And the minute he walked in the door, he knew something was off.

"Nice place."

"Well, thanks, but I haven't had a lot of time to straighten up lately."

Years on the job had also taught him to put two and two together very quickly. His first impression was that the apartment didn't look exactly untidy, just . . . something else. His second impression was of the dog. The dog that seemed to know Sara, but definitely did not seem to know his way around this apartment, as he explored the living room. Jumping back to his first impression, he put an adjective with that "something else" feeling: un-lived-in.

In all of about five seconds, Jim Brass knew that Grissom and Sara had been living together, and for some time, apparently. He also knew that he wasn't going to find any trace of Grissom in this apartment, since he could barely find a trace of Sara in it. They'd obviously been living at Grissom's townhouse.

"Sara, can we cut the crap here?" He was about to play his hand, and if she didn't cave, he would've blown everything. But, once again, he was following a gut instinct.

"I don't know what you mean."

"Even I would be upset if my significant other was spending a lot of time with an ex. Death wish or no."

Around the words "significant other" her head had whipped around in shock. Around "time" she was pulling it together, and by the time he finished the sentence she was perfectly normal. Damn the woman got it together fast. She should be giving lessons to hardened criminals. Sara Sidle had missed her calling.

"How long have you known?"

"Not the point. The point is that everyone needs to vent every now and then, and since no one else knows about the two of you, I'm guessing you may be about to explode. So, before that happens, why don't you talk to me?"

For a few seconds, he was unsure of how she was going to react to this. But then her shoulders slumped a bit and the wary look in her eyes fell away.

Turning, she led the way over to the couch.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I do not own CSI or any of the characters contained within this story, which is not for profit of any kind.

A/N: Sorry it took me a while to get this up. My muse went on temporary vacation. I'll be going back and fixing some things in the first few chapters. Nothing major, just grammatical, spelling, and structural changes that won't effect the story line at all.

**Chapter Four**

"It's not that I don't trust him," she began. "But he's obviously had feelings for her in the past. And then right after Cath tells me all about how Lady Heather is the only woman that has ever gotten under his skin, he shows up in her room as I'm processing her and looking so God damn guilty. I mean, if he wasn't doing anything wrong, then why with the look?"

_Because he's an idiot,_ thought Brass.

"So is that why you're here rather than at your place? Too frustrated to be around the idiot right now?"

Sara quirked an eyebrow and chuckled softly, amused. "A subtle question with a lot of meaning, calling him an idiot to put me at ease and let me know you're on my side. Not fishing for information are you, Brass?"

"Who, me? Never."

"Well, you've obviously figured out that I don't live here really anymore. I just came buy to make sure everything wasn't too dusty or anything. What else have you figured out?" she asked, challenging him with her eyes.

"You've been together between a year and a half and two years."

She neither confirmed nor denied this. "Site your source."

"You bought a dog together. Nobody does that when they first get together. Too focused on each other and not knowing if it'll really work out yet. I know you bought him together because he's never seen this place before. And since Nicky's abduction was right inside that time frame, I call that as the catalyst, if not for the meat of the relationship, then at least for the precursor to it."

"Hungry?"

"Changing the subject?"

"No. I just haven't eaten, and you don't look like you're leaving any time soon."

** ** **  **

Brass hadn't gotten much more out of Sara directly, but he had drawn some very interesting conclusions. They had eaten delivered Chinese food, since Sara obviously didn't have anything in her apartment. (The dog, who turned out to be named Bruno, begged for food in a rather unique way: he sat there and stared you in the eye until he unnerved you into giving him something. Brass had the strange thought that he'd be great to have in the interrogation room. Fitting that such a quirky dog should belong to such quirky people. When they were done eating, the dog licked his knee, rather like a human would pet an animal, and Brass suddenly had the sneaking suspicion that the dog was training him.) Sara vented some more about the situation instead of Grissom himself. She was frustrated by the fact that the woman obviously needed help, and she couldn't expect Grissom not to give it to her.

She also said some more about Catherine.

This was the part that Brass found to be most interesting. It was odd that Catherine should say Lady Heather was the only woman to ever get under his skin. It was widely known that Sara had gotten under his skin for years. And that forensic anthropologist, Terri Miller, had briefly too, though not as much as Sara obviously.

And Catherine knew all this.

Then there was the comment to Nick that he'd let slip when talking about his major faux pas not thinking Grissom was coming back from sabbatical. The one about "maybe he got himself a girlfriend."

Clues from which Brass could draw only one conclusion: Catherine knew, or at least suspected, that Grissom and Sara were seeing each other and was conducting an experiment of her own, trying to get Sara to let something slip.

This newest bit of information definitely gave him something to think about as he headed home to shower and catch some sleep before continuing with the next step in his investigation.


End file.
